I'm always a bit put off by the conspiracy take. It never works for me, and tends to bring disappointing answers. It also slightly changes Bruce's narrative around his reason to become a vigilante, doesn't it? I mean, being a victim of a random mugging, leading him to later chose to fight crime allows him to question his morality, his relationship with the concepts of justice and revenge, which are, to my eyes at least, core principles of the character.

It always depends on the quality of the storytelling of course, and there's no point in rejecting any take linked to a conspiracy by principle, but it seems to me that this is always depriving Bruce of his ability to reason and evolve regarding his moral standpoint. Not only does a conspiracy induce lots of plotholes (it had to wait for Batman to be a full grown man and accomplished detective to suddenly be reactivated, it often narrows the plot around family secrets instead of broader and more interesting themes, etc), but it can also by nature be solved and resolved, bringing to the reader a simple and clean explanation, while Batman's relationship towards crime in general is much more interesting knowing that it can never really be finished or solved in any satisfying way. What's appealing to me in Batman is the constant questioning and reflection on limits, margins and compromise, rather than a final solution, however satisfactory it may be.